Life and career

1986–2005: Early life

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986 at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City,[1] to a Catholic family. Her parents both have Italian ancestry; she also has more distant French-Canadian roots.[2] Her parents are Cynthia Louise (née Bissett), a philanthropist and business executive, and Internet entrepreneur Joseph Germanotta,[3] and she has a younger sister, Natali.[4] Brought up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Gaga says that her parents came from lower-class families and worked hard for everything.[5][6] From age 11, she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school.[7] Gaga described her high school self as "very dedicated, very studious, very disciplined" but also "a bit insecure". She considered herself a misfit and was mocked for "being either too provocative or too eccentric".[8]

I don't know exactly where my affinity for music comes from, but it is the thing that comes easiest to me. When I was like three years old, I may have been even younger, my mom always tells this really embarrassing story of me propping myself up and playing the keys like this because I was too young and short to get all the way up there. Just go like this on the low end of the piano ... I was really, really good at piano, so my first instincts were to work so hard at practicing piano, and I might not have been a natural dancer, but I am a natural musician. That is the thing that I believe I am the greatest at.[15]

In 2014, Gaga said she had been raped at 19, for which she underwent mental and physical therapy.[20] She has posttraumatic stress disorder that she attributes to the incident, and says that support from doctors, family and friends has helped her.[21]

2005–2007: Career beginnings

In 2005, Gaga recorded two songs with hip-hop singer Grandmaster Melle Mel for an audio book accompanying Cricket Casey's children's novel The Portal in the Park.[22] She also formed a band called the SGBand with some friends from NYU.[11][23] They played gigs around New York and became a fixture of the downtown Lower East Side club scene.[11] After the 2006 Songwriters Hall of Fame New Songwriters Showcase at The Cutting Room in June, talent scout Wendy Starland recommended her to music producer Rob Fusari.[24] Fusari collaborated with Gaga, who traveled daily to New Jersey, helping to develop her songs and compose new material.[25] The producer said they began dating in May 2006, and claimed to have been the first person to call her "Lady Gaga", which was derived from Queen's song "Radio Ga Ga".[26] Their relationship lasted until January 2007.[27]

In late 2007, Gaga met with songwriter and producer RedOne.[41] She collaborated with him in the recording studio for a week on her debut album, signing with Cherrytree Records, an Interscope imprint established by producer and songwriter Martin Kierszenbaum; she also wrote four songs with Kierszenbaum.[38] Despite securing a record deal, she said that some radio stations found her music too "racy", "dance-oriented", and "underground" for the mainstream market. She stated: "My name is Lady Gaga, I've been on the music scene for years, and I'm telling you, this is what's next."[7]

During this era, Gaga ventured into business, collaborating with consumer electronics company Monster Cable Products to create in-ear, jewel-encrusted headphones called Heartbeats by Lady Gaga.[86] She also partnered with Polaroid in January 2010 as their creative director and announced a suite of photo-capture products called Grey Label.[87][88] Her collaboration with her past record producer and ex-boyfriend Rob Fusari led to a lawsuit against her production team, Mermaid Music LLC.[b] At this time, Gaga was tested borderline positive for lupus, but claimed not to be affected by the symptoms and hoped to maintain a healthy lifestyle.[91][92]

2011–2014: Born This Way, Artpop, and Cheek to Cheek

In February 2011, Gaga released "Born This Way", the lead single from her studio album of the same name. The song sold more than one million copies within five days, earning the Guinness World Record for the fastest selling single on iTunes.[93] It debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the 1,000th number-one single in the history of the charts.[94] Its second single "Judas" followed two months later,[95] and "The Edge of Glory" served as its third single.[96] Both reached the top 10 in the US and the UK.[48][51] Her music video for "The Edge of Glory", unlike her previous work, portrays her dancing on a fire escape and walking on a lonely street, without intricate choreography and back-up dancers.[97]

Born This Way was released on May 23, 2011,[95] and debuted atop the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 1.1 million copies.[98] The album sold eight million copies worldwide and received three Grammy nominations, including Gaga's third consecutive nomination for Album of the Year.[99][100]Born This Way's following singles were "You and I" and "Marry the Night",[101] which reached numbers six and 29 in the US, respectively.[48] While filming the former's music video, Gaga met and started dating actor Taylor Kinney in July 2011, who played her love interest.[102][103] She also embarked on the Born This Way Ball tour in April 2012, which was scheduled to conclude the following March, but ended one month earlier when Gaga canceled the remaining dates due to a labral tear of her right hip that required surgery.[104] While refunds for the cancellations were estimated to be worth $25 million,[105] the tour grossed a total of $183.9 million globally.[106]

Gaga began work on her third studio album, Artpop, in early 2012, during the Born This Way Ball tour; she crafted the album to mirror "a night at the club".[117][118][119] In August 2013, Gaga released the album's lead single "Applause",[120] which reached number one in Hungary, number four in the US, and number five in the UK.[51][48][121] A lyric video for Artpop track "Aura" followed in October to accompany Robert Rodriguez's Machete Kills, where she plays an assassin named La Chameleon.[122] The film received generally negative reviews and earned less than half of its $33 million budget.[123][124] The second Artpop single, "Do What U Want", featured singer R. Kelly and was released later that month,[125] topping the charts in Hungary and reaching number 13 in the US.[48][126] Gaga removed the song from all streaming platforms in 2019 in the light of allegations made against Kelly sexually abusing several women; Gaga apologized for ever collaborating with him.[127]Artpop was released in November 2013 to mixed reviews.[128] Helen Brown in The Daily Telegraph criticized Gaga for making another album about her fame and doubted the record's originality, but found it "great for dancing".[129] The album debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart, and sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide as of July 2014.[130][131] "G.U.Y." was released as the third single in March 2014 and peaked at number 76 in the US.[48][132]

In 2016, Gaga sang the US national anthem in February at Super Bowl 50,[164] partnered with Intel and Nile Rodgers for a tribute performance to the late David Bowie at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards,[165] and sang "Til It Happens to You" at the 88th Academy Awards, where she was introduced by Joe Biden and was accompanied on-stage by 50 people who had suffered from sexual assault.[166] She was honored that April with the Artist Award at the Jane Ortner Education Awards by The Grammy Museum, which recognizes artists who have demonstrated passion and dedication to education through the arts.[167] Her engagement to Taylor Kinney ended in July; she later said her career had interfered with their relationship.[168]

Gaga played a witch named Scathach in American Horror Story: Roanoke, the series' sixth season,[169] which ran from September to November 2016.[170][171] Her role in the fifth season of the show ultimately influenced her future music, prompting her to feature "the art of darkness".[172] In September 2016, she released her fifth album's lead single, "Perfect Illusion", which topped the charts in France and reached number 15 in the US.[173][174][175] The album, titled Joanne, was named after Gaga's late aunt, who was an inspiration for the music.[176] It was released on October 21, 2016, and became Gaga's fourth number one album on the Billboard 200, making her the first woman to reach the US chart's summit four times in the 2010s.[177] The album's second single, "Million Reasons", followed the next month and reached number four in the US.[175][178] She later released a piano version of the album's title track in 2018,[179] which won a Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance.[180] To promote the album, Gaga embarked on the three-date Dive Bar Tour.[181]

Gaga performed as the headlining act during the Super Bowl LI halftime show on February 5, 2017. Her performance featured a group of hundreds of lighted drones forming various shapes in the sky above Houston's NRG Stadium—the first time robotic aircraft appeared in a Super Bowl program.[182] It attracted 117.5 million viewers in the United States, exceeding the game's total of 113.3 million viewers.[183] The performance led to a surge of 410,000 song downloads in the United States for Gaga and earned her an Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Special Class Program category.[184][185]CBS Sports included her performance as the second best in the history of Super Bowl halftime shows.[186] In April, Gaga headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.[187] She also released a standalone-single, "The Cure", which reached the top 10 in Australia.[188][189] In August, Gaga began the Joanne World Tour, which she announced after the Super Bowl LI halftime show.[190] Gaga's creation of Joanne and preparation for her halftime show performance were featured in the documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two, which premiered on Netflix in September.[191] Throughout the film, she was seen suffering from chronic pain, which was later revealed to be the effect of a long-term condition called fibromyalgia.[192] It resulted in Gaga canceling the last ten shows of the Joanne World Tour, which ultimately grossed $95 million from 842,000 tickets sold.[193][194]

Gaga and Cooper co-wrote and produced most of the songs on the soundtrack for A Star Is Born, which she insisted they perform live in the film.[204] Its lead single, "Shallow", performed by the two, was released in September[205] and has reached number one in several countries including the United States.[206] The song earned Gaga an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Original Song,[203] as well as the Grammys for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Best Song Written for Visual Media.[180] The soundtrack contains 34 tracks, including 19 original songs, and received generally positive reviews;[207] Mark Kennedy of The Washington Post called it a "five-star marvel" and Ben Beaumont-Thomas of The Guardian termed it an "instant classics full of Gaga's emotional might".[208][209] Gaga received a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music for her work on the album.[210] Commercially, the soundtrack debuted at number one in the US, making Gaga the only woman with five US number one albums in the 2010s, and breaking her tie with Taylor Swift as the most for any female artist this decade.[211] It additionally topped the charts in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland and the UK.[212] Later that month, Gaga announced her engagement to talent agent Christian Carino whom she had met in early 2017.[213] They ended the engagement in February 2019.[214]

Gaga has called the Indian alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra a "true inspiration",[237] and has also quoted Indian leader Osho's book Creativity on Twitter. Gaga says she was influenced by Osho's work in valuing rebellion through creativity and equality.[238]

Musical style and themes

Critics have analyzed and scrutinized Gaga's musical and performance style, as she has experimented with new ideas and images throughout her career. She says the continual reinvention is "liberating" herself, which she has been drawn to since childhood.[239] Gaga is a contralto with a range spanning from B♭2 to B5.[240][241][242] She has changed her vocal style regularly, and considers Born This Way "much more vocally up to par with what I've always been capable of".[243][244] In summing up her voice, Entertainment Weekly wrote: "There's an immense emotional intelligence behind the way she uses her voice. Almost never does she overwhelm a song with her vocal ability, recognizing instead that artistry is to be found in nuance rather than lung power."[245]

Gaga's songs have been called "depthless" by writer Camille Paglia in The Sunday Times,[246] but according to Evan Sawdey of PopMatters, she "does manage to get you moving and grooving at an almost effortless pace".[247] Gaga believes that "all good music can be played on a piano and still sound like a hit".[248]Simon Reynolds wrote in 2010, "Everything about Gaga came from electroclash, except the music, which wasn't particularly 1980s, just ruthlessly catchy noughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded with R&B-ish beats."[249]

Gaga's songs have covered a wide variety of concepts; The Fame discusses the lust for stardom, while the follow-up The Fame Monster expresses fame's dark side through monster metaphors. The Fame is an electropop and dance-pop album that has influences of 1980s pop and 1990s Europop,[250] whereas The Fame Monster displays Gaga's taste for pastiche, drawing on "Seventies arena glam, perky ABBAdisco, and sugary throwbacks like Stacey Q".[251]Born This Way has lyrics in English, French, German, and Spanish and features themes common to Gaga's controversial songwriting such as sex, love, religion, money, drugs, identity, liberation, sexuality, freedom, and individualism.[252] The album explores new genres, such as electronic rock and techno.[253]

The themes in Artpop revolve around Gaga's personal views of fame, love, sex, feminism, self-empowerment, overcoming addiction, and reactions to media scrutiny.[254]Billboard describes Artpop as "coherently channeling R&B, techno, disco and rock music".[255] With Cheek to Cheek, Gaga dabbled in the jazz genre.[256]Joanne, exploring the genres of country, funk, pop, dance, rock, electronic music and folk, was influenced by her personal life.[257]A Star Is Born contains elements of blues rock, country and bubblegum pop.[208]Billboard says its lyrics are about wanting change, its struggle, love, romance, and bonding, describing the music as "timeless, emotional, gritty and earnest. They sound like songs written by artists who, quite frankly, are supremely messed up but hit to the core of the listener."[258]

Videos and stage

Featuring constant costume changes and provocative visuals, Gaga's music videos are often described as short films.[259] The video for "Telephone" earned Gaga the Guinness World Record for Most Product Placement in a Video.[260] According to author Curtis Fogel, she explores bondage and sadomasochism and highlights prevalent feminist themes. The main themes of her music videos are sex, violence, and power. She calls herself "a little bit of a feminist" and asserts that she is "sexually empowering women".[261]

Gaga has called herself a perfectionist when it comes to her elaborate shows.[262] Her performances have been described as "highly entertaining and innovative";[263] the blood-spurting performance of "Paparazzi" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards was described as "eye-popping" by MTV News.[264] She continued the blood-soaked theme during The Monster Ball Tour, causing protests in England from family groups and fans in the aftermath of the Cumbria shootings, in which a taxi driver had killed 12 people, then himself.[265] At the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Gaga appeared in drag as her male alter ego, Jo Calderone, and delivered a lovesick monologue before a performance of her song "You and I".[266] As Gaga's choreographer and creative director, Laurieann Gibson provided material for her shows and videos for four years before she was replaced by her assistant Richard Jackson in 2014.[267]

In an article for Billboard by Rebecca Schiller in October 2018, the author traced back Gaga's videography from "Just Dance" till the release of A Star Is Born. Schiller noted how, following the Artpop era, Gaga's stripped-down approach to music was reflected in the clips for the singles from Joanne, taking the example of the music video of lead single "Perfect Illusion" where the singer "[ditched] the elaborate outfits for shorts and a tee-shirt as she performed the song at a desert party". It continued with her performances in the film as well as her stage persona.[268]

Public image

Public reception of Gaga's music, fashion sense, and persona is polarized. Because of her influence on modern culture, and her rise to global fame, sociologist Mathieu Deflem of the University of South Carolina has offered a course titled "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of the Fame" since early 2011 with the objective of unraveling "some of the sociologically relevant dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga".[270] When Gaga met briefly with then-president Barack Obama at a Human Rights Campaign fundraiser, he found the interaction "intimidating" as she was dressed in 16-inch heels, making her the tallest woman in the room.[271] When interviewed by Barbara Walters for her annual ABC News special 10 Most Fascinating People in 2009, Gaga dismissed the claim that she is intersex as an urban legend. Responding to a question on this issue, she expressed her fondness for androgyny.[272] In a 2010 Sunday Times article, Camille Paglia called Gaga "more an identity thief than an erotic taboo breaker, a mainstream manufactured product who claims to be singing for the freaks, the rebellious and the dispossessed when she is none of those".[273]

Gaga's outlandish fashion sense has also served as an important aspect of her character.[232][234] During her early career, members of the media compared her fashion choices to those of Christina Aguilera.[234] In 2011, 121 women gathered at the Grammy Awards dressed in costumes similar to those worn by Gaga, earning the 2011 Guinness World Record for Largest Gathering of Lady Gaga Impersonators.[93] The Global Language Monitor named "Lady Gaga" as the Top Fashion Buzzword with her trademark "no pants" a close third.[274]Entertainment Weekly put her outfits on its end of the decade "best-of" list, saying that she "brought performance art into the mainstream".[275]

Gaga's fans call her "Mother Monster", and she often refers to them as "Little Monsters", a phrase which she had tattooed on herself in dedication.[283] In his article "Lady Gaga Pioneered Online Fandom Culture As We Know It" for Vice, Jake Hall wrote that Gaga inspired several subsequent fan-branding, such as those of Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Justin Bieber.[284] In July 2012, Gaga also co-founded the social networking service LittleMonsters.com, devoted to her fans.[285] According to Guinness World Records, Gaga was the most followed person on Twitter in 2011, the most followed female pop singer in 2014 and the most powerful pop-star in 2014.[93][286]Forbes included Gaga on its Celebrity 100 from 2010 to 2015 and then in 2018 and its list of the World's Most Powerful Women from 2010 to 2014.[287][288] She earned $62 million, $90 million, $52 million, $80 million, $33 million, and $59 million from 2010 through 2015 and $50 million in 2018.[289][290] She was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2010[291] and 2019,[292] and ranked second in most influential people of the past ten years in a Time magazine readers' poll in 2013.[293] In March 2012, Gaga was ranked fourth on Billboard's list of top moneymakers of 2011 with earnings of $25 million, which included sales from Born This Way and her Monster Ball Tour.[294] The following year, she topped Forbes' List of Top-Earning Celebs Under 30,[290] and in February 2016, the magazine estimated Gaga's net worth to be $275 million.[295]

Born This Way Foundation

In 2012, Gaga launched the Born This Way Foundation (BTWF), a non-profit organization that focuses on youth empowerment. It takes its name from her 2011 single and album. Media proprietor Oprah Winfrey, writer Deepak Chopra, and US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius spoke at the foundation's inauguration at Harvard University.[308] The foundation's original funding included $1.2 million from Gaga, $500,000 from the MacArthur Foundation, and $850,000 from Barneys New York.[309] In July 2012, the BTWF partnered with Office Depot, which donated 25% of the sales, a minimum of $1 million of a series of limited edition back-to-school products.[310] The foundation's initiatives have included the "Born Brave Bus" that followed her on tour as a youth drop-in center as an initiative against bullying.[311][312]

In October 2015, at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Gaga joined 200 high school students, policy makers, and academic officials, including Peter Salovey, to discuss ways to recognize and channel emotions for positive outcomes.[313] In 2016, the foundation partnered with Intel, Vox Media, and Re/code to fight online harassment.[314] The sales revenue of the 99th issue of the V magazine, which featured Gaga and Kinney, was donated to the foundation.[162] Gaga and Elton John released the clothing and accessories line Love Bravery at Macy's in May. 25% of each purchase support Gaga's foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation.[315] Gaga partnered with Starbucks for a week in June 2017 with the "Cups of Kindness" campaign, where the company donated 25 cents from some of the beverages sold to the foundation.[316] She also appeared in a video by Staples Inc. to raise funds for the foundation and DonorsChoose.org.[317]

On the 2018 World Kindness Day, Gaga partnered with the foundation to bring food and relief to a Red Cross shelter for people who have been forced to evacuate homes due to the California wildfires. The foundation also partnered with Starbucks and SoulCycle to thank California firefighters for their relief work during the crisis. The singer had to previously evacuate her own home during the Woolsey Fire which spread through parts of Malibu.[318]

LGBT advocacy

As a bisexual woman,[d] Gaga actively supports LGBT rights worldwide.[319] She attributes much of her early success as a mainstream artist to her gay fans and is considered a gay icon.[320][321] Early in her career she had difficulty getting radio airplay, and stated, "The turning point for me was the gay community."[322] She thanked FlyLife, a Manhattan-based LGBT marketing company with whom her label Interscope works, in the liner notes of The Fame.[323] One of her first televised performances was in May 2008 at the NewNowNext Awards, an awards show aired by the LGBT television network Logo.[324]

In June 2016, during a vigil held in Los Angeles for victims of the attack at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Gaga read aloud the names of the 49 people killed in the attack, and gave a speech.[330] Later that month, Gaga appeared in Human Rights Campaign's tribute video to the victims of the attack.[331] She has opposed the presidency of Donald Trump and deplored his military transgender ban.[332][333] She supported former Secretary of StateHillary Clinton for president in 2016.[334] In 2018, a leaked memo from Trump's office revealed that his administration wanted to change the legal definition of sex in order to exclude transgender Americans. Gaga was one of the many celebrities to call him out and spread the #WontBeErased campaign to her 77 million Twitter followers.[335][336] In January 2019, during one of her Enigma shows, she called out Vice President Mike Pence for his wife Karen Pence working at a school where LGBTQ people are turned away.[337]

Gaga has been often regarded as a trailblazer for sometimes utilizing controversy to bring attention to various issues.[341][342] Because of The Fame's success—it was listed as one of the 100 Greatest Debut Albums of All-Time by Rolling Stone in 2013[343]—Gaga is acknowledged as one of the artists who propelled the rise in the popularity of synthpop in the late 2000s and early 2010s.[344] Scott Hardy, Polaroid's CEO, has praised Gaga for inspiring her fans and for her close interactions with them on social media.[345]

A new genus of ferns, Gaga, and two species, G. germanotta and G. monstraparva, have been named in her honor. The name monstraparva alluded to Gaga's fans, known as "little monsters", since their symbol is the outstretched "monster claw" hand, which resembles a tightly rolled young fern leaf prior to unfurling.[359] Gaga also has an extinct mammal, Gagadon minimonstrum,[360] and a parasitic wasp, Aleiodes gaga, named for her.[361][362]

Gaga is one of the best-selling music artists with estimated sales of 27 million albums and 146 million singles as of January 2016. Some of her singles are also among the best-selling worldwide.[368] She has grossed more than $512.3 million in revenue from her concert tours and residencies, becoming the fifth woman to pass the half-billion total as reported to Billboard Boxscore.[140][369] Gaga has consecutively appeared on Billboard magazine's Artists of the Year (scoring the definitive title in 2010).[370] Named Woman of the Year in 2015,[156] she is the 11th top digital singles artist in the US with a total of 61 million equivalent units certified according to Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[371] She became the first woman to receive the Digital Diamond Award certification from RIAA, is one of three artists with at least two Diamond certified songs ("Bad Romance" and "Poker Face"),[372][373] and is the first and only artist to have two songs pass 7 million downloads ("Poker Face" and "Just Dance").[374]